Night Cover by Michael Z. Lewin

Author:Michael Z. Lewin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480443693
Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller

16

“I’m beginning to spend my days here as well as my nights.”

“Oh yeah?” Groce was a crew-cut detective born fifteen years too late. “Well, it seems like I’m spending my nights here as well as my days, and that ain’t good. I got a pretty little wife to look after, you know what I mean?” Nudge nudge; wink wink.

“I want to know about that case I did the groundwork for.”

“Oh, the Commie kid and the school break-in. I don’t know why everybody’s making such a goddamn fuss about it. Doesn’t seem to me like it could be worth all the sweat.”

“Yeah. What I want—so that you can get home to that pretty little wife of yours—is what you’ve done the last couple of days.”

“Well,” said Groce modestly, “she ain’t that pretty. But my daughter, you ought to see my youngest daughter.”

“I’ll go out and arrest her if you don’t snap it up.” Powder was chronically impatient when it came to other people’s results.

Groce laughed. “Haw haw! That’s a good one. Better not do that, buddy. I got pull down at Headquarters.” Reined himself. “Well, first day I had a couple of the boys stop the kid on the street. Next I pulled him in.”

“Funkhouser?”

“Right, the Commie.”

“And what’s he say?”

“Well, I thought he was going to be easy, but I worked pretty hard on him and he didn’t say anything.”

Powder sighed.

“Which ain’t to say that he didn’t say anything, but he kept on bitching about his girl friend not coming to visit him or something. I think he’s off his nut, you ask me. It was like he didn’t understand the questions. Just kept asking about this girl.”

Powder frowned. “How long did you interrogate him?”

“Well, to be honest and frank with you, not very long. I let him sit for a while in Lock-Up, see how he liked the company, but I didn’t actually work very long. I got a lot of cases to work on, you know, Lieutenant. I don’t know what caseloads were like in your day, but now, wowee.” Groce fanned his hand.

“Did you read my report?” Powder’s smoldering coals were fanned by Groce’s wind.

“Sure.”

“Including the advice about what to do, and not do, about Rex Funkhouser?”

“To be honest with you, Lieutenant, I honestly figure you were playing it wrong. You got to lean on these guys, it’s the only way. Now, I don’t know what punks were like in your day—”

“In my day sergeants took advice from lieutenants.”

“Yeah, well. It’s my case, isn’t it? And if you want my opinion, I give it to you for nothing. I think you missed the important angle on this kid and that’s the Commie angle. If we keep after him we can probably come up with a whole little cell.”

“But you haven’t got anywhere yet?”

“Give me time. Give me time. I deliver the goods. But I got a lot of cases. I got this guy who’s been hustling old people about fixing their roofs so that—”

“You haven’t made any progress on physical evidence—the money or the typewriter?”

“No.

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